The Coming Apokélypse

I don’t know how we’ve been able to avoid Pokemon for so long. It was only two weekends ago that Porkfry got a Pokedex for his birthday, and I can remember that as his palm slid affectionately over the cover that I shivered. A spiritual sight seized me, and from the thick manual I could see eight black legs wrap around his trunk. One side of the book was a plain of seeking red eyes, and from the other sprung twelve starving umbilicals that sniffed for new prey.

It was at this Nintendo event - the one I didn’t feel equipped to cover - that we saw the new Pokemon Battle Revolution, a game one need not be a pokemaniac to appreciate. Essentially, it is an elaborate visualizer for the battles you have in the portable game. I don’t mean to say that it doesn’t have other functions, but that is it’s core. You control it wirelessly using the DS, or via a Wiimote you’ve copied your Pokemon to. Cool, certainly, but as a person who doesn’t catch them all - or, indeed, catch any - it was like "rims" or "grills." That is to say, it was a lifestyle totem for a life I don’t lead.

On Thursday, I began to hear Gabriel mutter. He is crazy, to be sure - but that is not the kind of crazy he is. He will arrange your silverware at a restaurant if he feels it is not "right," but he does not talk to people who aren’t there. I think I had assumed from his posture that he was sending a text message, perhaps about "Trevor’s" scandalous behavior "last weekend," but upon closer inspection he was leaning far back in his chair, jabbing feverishly with his index finger at the bottom screen of his DS. He has apparently contracted something at this press even that I had not.

The next day - while we prepared the writing circle, using the old rituals - his mad glee for the game was infectious. He had apparently been up much of the night, binding new creatures into his service and subjugating lesser trainers. I don’t know what the game is about for people in general, but he is Gabriel and he has a Gabriel interpretation.

There’s a cool guest strip over at VG Cats by the Staccato guy about the new games, the verdict is not good, but the level of pokeknowledge it would take to make this comic is substantial. I think everyone else has probably done a stint as a trainer already and then hung it up, so as a reader you are right to shake your head and feel superior. It is quite likely that you are not, at this moment, leveling your Bedew. Until Friday, I was proud that I did not know what a Bedew was. Now, I’m playing the game with my left pinky while I try to lead a normal life with the rest of my body.